The Fixed-Price Contract: A Challenge for the Software Development Project.

Gaebert C


Zusammenfassung
Describing the software development project between customer and supplier at the contracting level as interaction of the involved organizations in terms of game theory, we can show that the parties are in a dilemma situation regarding the effort for closing the gaps of incomplete requirement specifications. Incomplete, ambiguous, and changing requirements are the number one reason for failure of software development projects. Customer and supplier have to interchange information for closing requirement gaps. However, gathering and interchanging information generates undesirable costs. The most commonly used contract model is a fixed-price contract. Under this condition, the supplier is forced to cooperate, whereas the customer prefers to defect regarding closing requirement gaps. In support of our theoretical argument, we carried out an empirical investigation. We derive suggestions for improving the fixed-price contract design of software development projects as well as for the cooperation behavior during the project.

Schlüsselwörter
Software development project; Outsourcing; Failure; Information asymmetry; Dilemma structures; Incomplete contract



Publikationstyp
Forschungsartikel (Buchbeitrag)

Begutachtet
Ja

Publikationsstatus
Veröffentlicht

Jahr
2015

Buchtitel
Software Technologies, 9th International Joint Conference, ICSOFT 2014, Vienna, Austria, August 29-31, 2014, Revised Selected Papers

Herausgeber
Holzinger A, Cardoso J, Cordeiro J, Libourel T, Maciaszek LA, van Sinderen M

Seiten
97-112

Band
555

Reihe
Communications in Computer and Information Science

Verlag
Springer

Sprache
Englisch

ISBN
978-3-319-25579-8

DOI